MUMBAI: Zee's online lottery business is rolling full steam ahead. A few weeks ago, the Maharastra chapter was unveiled amid much fanfare. Now in an attempt to make the Playwin Online games more convenient, Playwin Infravest has launched the Mobile Lotto for Mumbai residents.

A release states that the service is currently available to the subscribers of Orange and BPL in Mumbai. The players can indulge in the Sikkim Super Lotto game by choosing their lucky six numbers from 1 to 49 (each separated by a space e.g. LT 2 45 31 23 5 6) through SMS to the mobile Lotto number 7575.

Every customer gets a return SMS confirming their chosen numbers. The winners are also alerted through SMS. The users are charged Rs 10 per game, which is the same as what is charged through Playwin terminals, plus Re 1.50 towards government levies (on the cellular operator), while they get billed for the SMS messages they send; as per the policy of the mobile operator.

Playwin CEO Sanjay Das says, “The unique concept of Mobile Lotto, is a part of our distribution strategy, which enables and facilitates people to play, whenever they wish by using their mobiles. Playwin online games essentially cater to the basic aspiration of people to get rich instantly, riding on the hope that luck will favour them. Hence we are giving our consumers yet another opportunity to try their luck through a quicker, faster and exciting feature of SMS.”

Playwin has tied up with Elabs, who have developed this unique concept of Mobile Lotto. Elabs is using its proprietary MOS Platform, a unique concept in which the merchants, the operators and the subscribers are brought together to conduct various transactions. Elabs has also tied up with two of its associate companies Xius India Limited and Cibernet India to implement this service.

BPL Mobile chief business development officer Krishna Angara was quoted as saying, "Today, with over 75 per cent of our subscriber base using SMS and with the popularity of the Playwin game in the market, we are confident that playing Lotto through mobilephones will become a craze amongst our base.”

Meanwhile, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report states that Essel Shyam will emerge as a strong player in the VSAT arena in 2003. Essel's online lotteries are VSAT supported. In 2002, the company ordered 1500 VSAT's.

By 2006-07, the report estimates that the market size for VSAT services is estimated to reach Rs 8-10 billion.